Godhood
by brandend
Summary: Jojen grapples with his fate. All men must die, he knows, and some for little purpose at all but to glut a grave, bring up the seed, to bracken earth as water. And his is to feed the rotted lips of death, ravenous as a wolf.


This is heavily _A Dance with Dragons_ -based & is centred on the theory that Jojen is actually part of the paste that Bran eats before he's able to warg the weirwood in Bloodraven's cave. As much as I like Jojen, I also enjoy killing him. #sorrynotsorry

Beta-read by the marvellous boomvroomshroom.

* * *

I.  
Today is not the day he dies.

He is a small and sickly thing, grub-pale and quiet, with eyes green as moss and fingers that grasp, with surprising strength, Meera's own, as if clinging to her life.

The lad will live, Jyana feels. _Jojen_ will live.

II.  
Years later, the three-eyed crow first comes to him, now sheen-skinned and sweltering with fever, though today is not the day he dies. His dream is of a great weirwood, its leaves blazing red as if in flame, against snow-white wastes of land. _This is where I die,_ he knows, where death will come in an emulsion of blood, in a fire of veins scarlet as leaves. Already he can feel it, too, there burrowed in his flesh—the nick of a knife hot against his wrist, and the humidity of his blood seeping far into dead roots of earth.

III.  
The greendreams do not lie. The crow does not lie. He watches, those three dark eyes depthless as voids, as Jojen turns in fevered sleep, sees things that are, things that will be, in time. A skeletal husk of a man, white as the emptiness of winter, sits deep below the recesses of earth, root-snarled of skull and seeing, seeing all through his thousand eyes and one, blood red. Jojen can feel his skin sloughing, slick like dragon-scales, beneath that stare, can hear the river below pounding in his ears, fast as a heart that soon shall beat no more.

IV.  
Atimes he thinks he fears them, the dreams and the sight (tonight, the black of the sea drowning the gates of an ancient castle, and men, pale-faced, their dead eyes fat and dark as plums), but the dread seldom lasts more than seconds, never sets a trembling in his heart. All men must die, he knows, and some for little purpose at all but to glut a grave, bring up the seed, to bracken earth as water. _And mine is to feed the rotted lips of death, ravenous as a wolf, to stave off winter but for a little while…_

V.  
Winter is coming, he knows. Jojen can feel it in his bones, twisting as a dagger, see it ashing in Meera's flesh, see it rippling through Bran. Yet beyond winter comes spring, budding spearwort in the swamps of Greywater Watch, slow-ripening reeds beneath the meagre sun, blazening over the seas. And Meera is laughing, her green eyes scrunched half in sadness, bouncing a babe on her knee, their mother watching. _Jojen_ , she calls the babe, and he is a strong and hardy thing.

 _Only if I die_ , _if the bitter night does not last._

He knows what must be done.

VI.  
They do not suspect, have never suspected, that it needs must come to this. (In his dream tonight, the sky blazes green, and the great city is embers, silent but for the cries of dragons. Outside the cave, vast snows drift over summitless skies, and the forest aches its leaves. It will not be today he dies.)

Bran seems a god of silence, leant back against the great skeletoned roots with Meera curled into his side, pulling at his blooded lips. There, in the heat of flesh, will Jojen live. There, in the depths of gods, must life nurse death.

VII.  
Today is the day he dies, the day Bran's eyes will open, the day he joins with godhood. He takes one last lingering look at the sun, shadowed behind faint clouds, and shakes the trembling from his hand.

The Children bring him a bowl, many-faced as gods, one of their little knives silk-black as night. The slip of the blade is hot beneath his skin, unfurling in his opened veins. He sees, though his eyes darken, though his heart quivers— Bran, many-eyed, white-eyed, the crow— a great barrenness of snow beneath the spreading dawn— and all the fires sputter out.

VIII.  
Bran brings the paste to his lips— bitter at first, then strangely cloying on his tongue, honey-sweet and lingering as a mother's kiss. He remembers his mother, fleetingly, how oft she'd told him _no climbing_ — but none had forbade him from _flying_ , as the three-eyed crow had promised he would.

He slips into the bark of the weirwood, into the memory of its roots– and, oh, Bran _sees_ , and _oh_ , he tastes the blood, hot and steely and wet in his awe-gaped mouth, and oh, he _flies_ , slips there into the tapestry of days, into the lustred skin of time.


End file.
